Penn State 2025-26 laureate Pearl Gluck (center) spoke with staff after her discussion Tuesday in the Misciagna Family Center of Performing Arts. Mirror photo by Colette Costlow

American filmmaker and Penn State University 2025-26 laureate Pearl Gluck discussed her award-winning short documentaries with Penn State Altoona students Tuesday in the Wolf Kuhn Theatre of the Misciagna Family Center of Performing Arts.

Penn State professor emeritus Jerry Zolten, who also led the Q&A session, said that it was a real treasure for students to hear from a Penn State faculty member.

“And it makes it (filmmaking) real,” he said. “‘Maybe I could do that.’ I think it’s really encouraging in those ways.”

Likewise, Gluck hoped that students would take away not only the importance of independent filmmaking but also the significance of storytelling across every creative medium.

“Find your why. Why do you do what you do,” she asked students.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gluck received a Sundance Producer’s Lab Fellowship in 2000 and a festival mentorship a year later, which she used to create her first film. “Divan” is the story of her journey back to her Orthodox Jewish/Hungarian roots and retrieving a family heirloom: a couch on which esteemed rabbis used to sleep.

Gluck said she encourages people to ask about their own stories with the documentary, regardless of the medium they use to tell them.

“The more the story is about you, the more it is universal, not about you,” she said.

Gluck is also known for projects “Where is Joel Baum?” and “Junior,” which were both nominated for various film awards. Her films have been screened at film festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, as well as featured on NPR and PBS.

She is an associate professor at Penn State’s College of Communications, where she teaches screenwriting, directing and producing. She is also a co-founder of the Centre Film Festival.

After showing attendees her director’s trailer — a 5-minute compilation of her work and awards she has won — she said that Centre County reminds her of her own ancestral roots, as her grandparents came from small towns.

As part of her laureate tour, Gluck has also documented trips across Penn State commonwealth campuses on YouTube and Instagram, titled “On Location with the Laureate,” with the Altoona campus being its last stop.

During her travels, she said she has come to know Pennsylvania through its first-generation American citizens and first-generation college graduates like herself.

“It really has been an incredible trip,” she said.

Future artists

Many students who attended the discussion felt uplifted about their craft after hearing Gluck’s filmmaking experience and advice.

Sophomore student Kait Shaw said she attended Gluck’s discussion Tuesday because her younger sister studies film at the Penn State Erie campus. Shaw plans on speaking with her sister about the director’s trailer that was shown to spark conversation.

Shaw said she could personally relate to Gluck’s journey in exploring creative spaces because of her own interest in ballet and modern contemporary dance. Students like her can feel encouraged to chase their creative aspirations when learning from artists like Gluck.

“It gives students who are unsure an outlet and see what their future could look like,” she said.

Her friend Maura Smith agreed, as her cousin felt lost when entering the film scene at a young age.

“Having local filmmakers come and talk about their creative process, their path, is really beneficial for those students who might feel unsure of how to break into that,” she said.

Smith is a junior at Penn State Altoona, where she studies psychology but also enjoys visual arts. As a Brooklyn native, she also related to Gluck’s New York roots.

“It was nice to see something I was familiar with and could relate to,” she said.

Tuesday was engineering student Devanshi Dubey’s first time attending a film event on campus.

“It was very eye-opening in a way that I didn’t know that small films could have such big impacts,” she said, mentioning a scene in the director’s trailer depicting a Holocaust survivor showing a tattoo artist the number on her arm.

“It showed … how a picture can speak more than a thousand words,” she said.

While being Dubey’s first time watching independent films, she said she’s open to watching more short documentary films rather than blockbuster films.

Dubey said Gluck tells authentic stories about realistic characters living ordinary lives, which is something different from the larger films produced today.

“I appreciate that she’s showing the stories that people have been through,” she said.

Mirror Staff Writer Colette Costlow is at 814-946-7414.